Pest of the past, dingo's star in the ascendancy

Scientists seek a new role for our wild dog blamed, wrongly, for destruction of livestock. Stephen Cauchi reports.

HERE'S a radical future vision for the Australian landscape. National parks full of dingoes, preying on pests such as foxes and cats.

Where national park ends and grazing land begins, prowling guard dogs (or llamas or donkeys) ensure their dingo cousins keep away from the farmers' flocks — which, incidentally, are no longer sheep, but kangaroos.

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This vision, at least the dingo part, has been building slowly since the late 1980s, when the CSIRO tentatively suggested it.

The vision has just been renewed following a conference at the University of New South Wales, where a number of scientists called for the reintroduction of pure-bred dingoes into the nation's national parks.

Why? Because Australia holds the record for the most mammal extinctions in the world, with half occurring here.

At least 18 species, including rat kangaroos and the lesser bilby, have gone the way of the dodo, and more are set to follow.

This has happened because Europeans brought with them foxes and cats, the main killers of native mammals. But they also brought flocks of sheep, and to safeguard their flocks, they began trapping, shooting and poisoning dingoes.

Unfortunately, the dingo was the main check on foxes and cats. The small native mammals no longer had a protector. The obvious solution? Reintroduce the pure dingo into areas where they have been eradicated.

Unfortunately, dingoes are as disliked now by graziers as they were in the 19th century. "It would not be a popular idea," said Chris Dickman, a Sydney University ecologist who spoke favourably of the concept at the conference.

"There is no doubt dingoes are hated with a passion."

James Cook University's Chris Johnson, who last year wrote a paper advocating the idea, acknowledges sheep farmers will be outraged.

"Dingoes cause such anxiety," he said. "Sheep farmers have lots of pest problems, but the one that is most likely to keep them awake at night is dingoes. A single dingo is capable of killing maybe 20 sheep in a night.

"It's possible for a sheep farmer to wake up in the morning and see a paddock full of disembowelled sheep. It's horrible."

But that problem could be overcome, said Melbourne University zoology lecturer Kath Handasyde, by having European-bred guard dogs mind the sheep herds.

"They'll keep the dingo off because the dingo recognises (the grazing land) as another dog's territory. Italian guard dogs are not only serious fox killers but amazing herd-guarding animals. You can put them with chooks, horses, cattle, sheep."

There are other hurdles, according to Dr Handasyde's Melbourne University colleague, ecology lecturer Cheryl O'Dwyer.

"With any introduction or reintroduction program you need to alleviate the effects that are making them endangered in the first place. One of the biggest factors making dingoes endangered is interbreeding with wild dogs."

This is certainly borne out in Victoria, where dingoes still roam national parks, though in limited numbers.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment decided in March to issue a "preliminary recommendation" of the dingo as an endangered species, with a final decision pending.

According to the listing document, "the total dingo population in Australia probably peaked during the 1930s-50s. Since then numbers have remained high but the proportion of pure dingoes in the overall population has declined at an alarming rate".

"Hybridisation remains the greatest threat to the continued existence of pure dingo populations." Such populations in Victoria, it says, are "restricted to remote areas in the north-east and east of the state".

Nationally, the purest dingo population is on Fraser Island.

Given the problem of hybridisation with domestic dogs, is it possible to reintroduce pure dingoes in large numbers?

Yes, says Professor Johnson, if hybrids were trapped and shot. Furthermore, pure dingoes in packs tend to be very self-preserving, he says.

Troubled history

■Fossil evidence suggests dingoes arrived in Australia about 3500-4000 years ago, when Asian seafarers brought them from mainland Asia, where they originated as a sub-species of the grey wolf.

■Dingoes spread to all parts of Australia and its offshore islands, except Tasmania.

■In the 1880s, construction of an 8500-kilometre dingo fence to protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland began to keep the native wild dogs out of the relatively fertile south-east part of the continent.

■In the 20th century, pure-bred dingo numbers dropped rapidly as they began interbreeding with introduced dogs.